According to a new report, the United States is home to fully 44% of the world’s major cloud and internet data center sites. Perhaps more importantly, that figure will likely remain north of 40% for the next three years, predicted Synergy Research Group.
“It is remarkable that the U.S. still accounts for almost half of all hyperscale data centers, reflecting the U.S. dominance of cloud and internet technologies. Other countries are now featuring more prominently in terms of data center build, but even three years from now we forecast that the U.S. will still account for some 40% of the worldwide total,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, in a release.
Dinsdale added that companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and other major cloud providers continue to build out new data centers at a frantic pace. “Hyperscale growth goes on unabated and we already have visibility of at least 69 more hyperscale data centers that are at various stages of planning or building. We will pass the 500 milestone before the end of 2019,” he said.
Although the United States continues to lead in the game of data center geography, other countries are growing at a quick clip, Synergy Research Group found. The firm said that, during the second half of 2017, a number of data centers opened in Germany, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia and Brazil. China, naturally, was also a growth location—which isn’t surprising China’s Tencent and Baidu are among the world’ major users of data centers.
The growth of data centers is important to telecom providers mainly because of the the data center interconnection (DCI) trend. DCI is the process of creating speedy connections between data centers from different providers, thus allowing large enterprise customers, cloud providers, content owners and others more data center options at lower prices. Although major telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink have sold their own data center operations, they’re still looking to provide DCI services to data center operators.
Indeed, cloud data centers will play a key role in the next big speed jump for networks, from 100 Gbps to 400 Gbps, and that will have a positive effect on the Ethernet switch and data center market overall—to the tune of $14 billion by 2021, research firm Dell'Oro Group recently predicted.